“I care if you get hurt. Or if Lo is hurt.”
I stare at him sharply. “What do you know about Lo?”
“I know more than you think,” he says. I’m too drained to rise to the bait, so instead I start the swim back to Waterfell, the water in my body guiding me there. Speio follows. “You sure you don’t want to know?”
“Know what, Speio?”
“I followed my father to La Jolla and I talked to Cara.”
Cara? My archnemesis whom he hooked up with before we left California?
“That’s weird. I thought you were done with the humans and you couldn’t wait to come back home,” I say.
Speio shoots me an exasperated stare. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to keep myself in the loop, especially with the threat of hybrids running around.”
This time he has my attention. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. Hybrids,” he says. “What did you think, Riss? That they were just going to go away now that you’ve returned to your rightful place hidden in the deep? Ehmora’s minions still want to take over the world. All you’ve done by getting rid of one of their leaders is slow them down.”
I frown. “But Echlios says we haven’t seen any hybrids in weeks. And what does Cara have to do with any of that? She’s human. She doesn’t even know what we are.”
“That doesn’t mean more of them don’t exist,” Speio says. “We have to be careful. And Cara’s been hanging out with Lo this summer.” I try to ignore the stab of jealousy those words cause in the pit of my stomach, but it’s a losing battle. I can picture Cara’s toned form in a swimsuit and imagine exactly what hanging out with Lo means. Speio grins, obviously enjoying my discomfort.
I swipe a clawed forearm at him. “You are the worst friend in the world, you know that? So, what did Cara say? And what did you tell her, by the way? That you were just dropping in from the other side of the world?”
“Um, Lo’s bonded to you, Riss. It’s not like he’s going to go chasing after someone else,” he says with a knowing look at my suddenly savage tone. “Calm down. Cara just thinks I was visiting from Los Angeles. Plus, Lo has been a perfectly well-behaved boy, if you must know. No hookups, not even with Cara,” he clarifies with a very human-looking eye roll. “He’s been surfing and working at the Marine Center all summer.”
Even though I’m telling myself that I wasn’t worried about what Lo was doing, I can’t help the immediate relief that sweeps through me. I told him he had to find himself, and I didn’t put any rules around what that should be. Any normal boy would have taken that as permission to play the field and have fun. Then again, Lo isn’t any normal boy.
“Anyway...” Speio continues. Something flashes in his eyes before it’s hidden. I gesture at him to continue. “Cara mentioned that Lo’s been getting sick.”
“Sick? What kind of sick?”
“Kevin at the center said that he passed out a couple times over the past few weeks. He told them it was dehydration, but last week he passed out again in front of a bunch of people on the beach. They called 911.”
“Did they take him to a hospital?” I ask quickly, even though I know that it would have been all over the news and would have filtered to us in a heartbeat. I can see the headlines now—Alien Species Discovered. They Walk Among Us! San Diego would be the next Roswell, New Mexico.
“No, Jenna was there. She told the paramedics that he’s a diabetic and had low blood sugar. Don’t ask me how that girl proved it, but she did. Anyway, Cara said that Lo went home with Jenna. That was last week.”
“But I didn’t feel anything those other times,” I say. “Via the bond, I mean.”
“That’s what happened this morning?”
“Yes. It was bad, Speio, like I was being gutted from nose to tail. It was so strong I could barely handle it. It felt...wrong.”
Speio leans his body into mine in a comforting gesture. “He’ll be okay, Riss,” he says slowly with an uncertain look at me. “Look, I know things between us haven’t been great, and I know that’s my fault. I know you don’t trust me. But I care about you, and I care about Lo.”
“You hate Lo.”
“I don’t hate Lo,” Speio says as we swim past a row of unfamiliar underwater mountains. I must have drifted farther than I’d expected. “I thought that he was hiding something, and he was. But now, well, he’s a part of you...so that means he’s a part of us.” Speio stops, considering his words. “And if something happens to him, that’s going to be bad for everyone here, right?”
“Nothing bad’s going to happen to Lo,” I say swiftly, just as I feel the pull of home. We’re nearly back.
“No, you’re right,” he says. “Riss?”
“What?”
“I want you know that I’m here no matter what. I mean, I know you don’t trust me and you have every right not to, but if we have to go back for Lo, then I’ll go back with you, okay?”
“What about finding your mate here in Waterfell?” I ask. “It’s what you’ve always wanted.”
Speio shrugs, another humanlike gesture that almost makes me smile. “It’s what I thought I wanted because I couldn’t have it when we lived on the mainland. But turns out, just because we’re home doesn’t mean that I’m going to bond with someone. Plus, I miss skateboarding. And surfing. And our friends. And believe it or not, a part of me wishes that I could finish my senior year at Dover.” He stares at me, his eyes vulnerable. “Too human?”
“Not at all,” I admit, floored by his candid admissions. “I feel like that, too. I miss Jenna and Sawyer. I even miss Cara sometimes.” Cara...said archnemesis who’d had her eye on Lo and had been determined to banish me to hell when she realized that we were a couple. She even hooked up with Speio to get back at me. I grin. “But only on very special occasions.”
Speio eyes Nova and Nell, who don’t know whether to be annoyed at my disappearing act or relieved that I’ve returned before they got flayed alive by Echlios for letting me out of their sight in the first place. “You looked really good up there today, Riss,” he says so softly that I can hardly hear him. “Like a real queen. Your father would have been proud.”
“Thanks,” I say, startled.
But Speio is already swimming away. It’s more words than we’ve spoken in months, and I realize that I’ve missed him. I think back to what he said about Lo and frown. Dehydration is a common affliction for our species, particularly because of the combination of water and salt in our bodies. But Lo is a hybrid, which means that he should be able to tolerate it better than we can. Or maybe it’s the reverse.
The way Echlios explained it, Lo is the best of both worlds—an Aquarathi with transmuted human DNA that allows him to live comfortably on land or in the sea. He is the product of accelerated evolution based on the laws of natural selection...accelerated because his mother and her cronies induced those genetic characteristics. We faced and fought others that looked like hideous mutations, hybrids that Ehmora, my mother and the brilliant genetic-scientist ex-headmaster of Dover Prep had concocted. As far as we know, Lo is the only perfect hybrid in existence. But maybe he isn’t perfect. Maybe he’s flawed in some terminal, human way.
The furious outward rush of breath leaves me weak. Lo can’t be sick. He can’t be. He’s meant to be with me. All of a sudden, those countless arguments I had with myself about leaving him behind become meaningless. The only thing I can think about is Lo and figuring out what’s wrong with him...figuring out how I can save him. Because I did this. It’s my fault.